#24 Boom – YA

One minute, 17-year-old Anise is living her worst nightmare: her boyfriend and that girl she always knew was trouble, under the bleachers, a tangle of tongues and arms. The next minute, a whole new nightmare, one she never imagined possible. Boyfriend—gone. Skank—gone. Bleachers, school, city, and beyond—everything everywhere, collapsed into piles of fine white ash. Anise alone is untouched—and what remains of her life is about to get worse.

BOOM weaves between the aftermath of Anise’s inadvertent catastrophe and the one-sided love story that ignited it: Her bungled survival in a wasteland of her own making. Her stumble into the arms of the dark-eyed new kid. The complicated joy of discovering that not all is lost. The struggle to hold onto an ideal of love that might only exist in her mind.

As Anise finally solves the mystery of her existence, answering questions that have tugged at her for as long as she can remember, she realizes she’s far from alone. She’s belonged somewhere else all along. But considering the cost of her new life—a dangerous destiny with little chance of escape—the only question is: will she stay?